


off season

by SashaSea (SHCombatalade)



Series: coin toss universe [3]
Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6130631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHCombatalade/pseuds/SashaSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Neil has never actually lied to the press - he just refuses to play their games. One day someone is going to stop tap-dancing around the issue and ask him what they really want to know, and he’ll probably give them a straight answer.</p><p>Not today, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	off season

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Межсезонье](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13503831) by [jana_nox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jana_nox/pseuds/jana_nox), [WTF_Young_Adult_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Young_Adult_2018/pseuds/WTF_Young_Adult_2018)



“Neil!” He’s gotten used to ignoring his name, especially when it’s shouted in unison by one two too many voices like this - the final buzzer hasn’t even finished echoing before they descend, practically crowding him back onto the court. “Neil! Neil!” (There’s a few interspersed ‘Mr. Josten!’s that he knows are players from the local college; he’d emailed their coach to arrange a day where he could drop by for practice.)

“Neil,” the voice is whispered directly against the shell of his ear, and he sweeps backwards with his racquet without looking; Ellie laughs as she deflects the move, tangling her fingers in the net to jerk it away.

Cameras flash, and the sea of reporters go wild.

She smiles her best media smile - it looks as fake as she means it too, completely hollow - when she hands the stick back; two more photos catch the action. “I’ll buy your drinks tonight if you make one of them cry.”

He turns toward the reporters, finally acknowledging them, and points at random to a face - it’s not one he recognizes. “Neil,” the woman purrs, red lips and red nails, “just one question.” He shrugs. It’s never just one. She puts the pen to her lips like she’s pretending to deliberate, when he knows she’s been prepping herself for this moment for at least a week (he knows, in that split second of time, that he is going to regret whatever words are spoken next). “Do you have a girlfriend?”

It’s the closest anyone has come to asking the question they all desperately want to ask since that last game of the season. He shrugs. “No.” There’s a fevered glint in the woman’s eye, like maybe this is the answer she wanted. He sees her wave at her cameraman, urging him closer. “I have cats.”

(No one cries, but Ellie still buys him drinks for that one. Clark does too.)

* * *

He has seventeen text messages before he makes it back to the locker room. Every single one of them is from Nicky, and every single one of them is the same laughing emoji.

* * *

“Seriously though,” Clark’s voice hitches up an octave as he tugs one of the straps around his hip and thigh tighter. Neil checks the harness a third time; it’s not comfortable, but it’s probably not meant to be. He assumes that means everything is in place. “Am I allowed to ask?”

Neil reaches over to tug the strap even further; Clark all but howls. “Sure,” he says, wrapping the loose end around his hand. “Go ahead.”

He dodges the plastic cup thrown his way with the ease of someone who spends large amount of time avoiding projectiles; Clark follows after with an open-handed swat with the ease of a professional backliner. “Fuck you.” The first time they met, Neil had broken Clark’s nose (it hadn’t healed straight). Now they get together every Thursday at the local gym’s indoor climbing wall.

He smiles his predator’s smile. “Race you to the top.”

(Neil wins. He’s always been the fastest on the court, no matter which direction he was traveling. He pushes away from the wall with the same motion as he rings the bell, sitting suspended thirty feet up by the harness around his hips.

Clark is winded by the time he taps out on his own buzzer. “Seriously,” he wheezes, knuckles gone white with the exertion to keep his larger frame pressed against the wall. “Fuck you, man.”

With a lazy kick, Neil starts rappelling down. “About seven years,” he calls up from the bottom.)

* * *

The next time a reporter musters the courage to speak to them, it’s right outside the arena after practice (it’s technically the off-season, but they’d learned back in his college years that Neil never stayed off the court for long). Neil is carrying his and Andrew’s bags, and Magda is teaching them various off-color jokes in Portuguese. “Which of the Knights are you closest to?” he asks, obviously aiming the question in a different direction.

The thing is, Neil has never actually lied to the press - he just refuses to play their games. One day someone is going to stop tap-dancing around the issue and ask him what they really want to know, and he’ll probably give them a straight answer.

Not today, though.

“Andrew,” he replies without a moment of hesitation. The reporter looks like he’s already polishing the awards in his head, and Neil keeps walking towards the car. He almost bumps into Magda, who slowed her pace to keep and eye on him. “And now Magda.” The reporter looks just a little less victorious now.

* * *

At three in the morning on a Tuesday, Neil sits bolt upright in bed and punches Andrew in the face.

“What the _,_ ” Andrew comes awake fighting, elbow unerringly finding its way into the hollow of Neil’s ribs, a hand around his throat shoving him backwards. His lip is split, and he’s near to hyperventilating. “ _Fuck_ , Neil. What the fuck are you-”

Neil snorts. “Sorry,” and the apology is lost in the attempt to smother a laugh. “I’m sorry, I-” Another laugh, and Andrew feels his jaw clench; he knows if he acts now he wouldn’t pull the blow like Neil had in the last second. “I had a dream, you were-” He bites his lip between his teeth, but there’s nothing that can hide the laughter in his eyes. “You deserved that.”

It’s a herculean effort for Andrew to lower his hands to the bed. “I deserved that.”

If he notices the irritated incredulity, Neil ignores it; he’s already curled back around his pillow, halfway asleep. The smile lingers on his face. Slowly unwinding his fingers from the blanket, Andrew reaches out to hover his fingers above the remnants of laughter. He traces the air above the scar at Neil’s shoulder, down his arms, and skims the tips of his fingers down Neil’s ribcage to grab at his hip - 

-and then he shoves, as hard as he can, and Neil lands on the floor with a painful sounding thump. “You deserved that,” he parrots mockingly.

(Around four in the morning, Andrew joins him on the floor with a pillow and a blanket. “I genuinely hate you.”)

* * *

The next day Ellie manages to get a photo of both of them looking tired and injured over breakfast and she hangs it on the locker room wall.

* * *

“I think Greg is having an affair.”

Andrea watches the controlled movement of the coffee cup, slowly down to the counter, because she can’t bring herself to look him in the eye; she halfway hopes that he laughs at her, that he sneers how stupid she’s being. Another part of her hopes that he walks out, silent, so the next time they find themselves on familiar ground they can go back to being strangers. The napkin in her lap is shredded into meticulous strips of paper.

The solid clink of ceramic landing on wood catches her attention. “He’s not.” In all the possibilities she’d considered, this wasn’t one of them. She hasn’t seen either him or Neil since the championships, and with everything that’s happened since she isn’t even thinking about work; the last thing she expected was to run into the Knights’ goalkeeper on her coffee run (and when she did, the last thing she planned was to talk to him. She still remembers all too well a cold and rainy night at a convenience store). “He’s drinking again, and trying to hide it.”

It shouldn’t surprise her that he keeps tabs on her life. It should maybe concern her, though.

She nods her head; it’s not the worst thing she could have confirmed, but it’s - it’s close. “What do I do?” she whispers, and this time he does sneer.

“How the fuck should I know?” He stands from the table, hood already pulled up to hide his face - she doesn’t think anyone else would be stupid enough to approach him, not after the video of him taking his six-foot-five coach down with a single punch passed its ten millionth view on YouTube (”I am five million of these views,” Matt Boyd claimed over twitter the following day, but refused to comment further on the matter), but supposes there’s a camera in the hands of every idiot nowadays. He pauses. Considers. The hood falls down to cover his face to the eyebrows, and she spends a second of her day to wonder if he owns any jackets that actually fit.

It’s a second completely wasted, she realizes, when she remembers that Neil is five inches taller.

“You help him,” Andrew finally tells her, “or you leave. Your choice.”

He makes it sound so _easy,_ like it’s really only a matter of walking away - they have a _life_ together _._ “What if I can’t decide?”

Andrew drops a napkin on the table in front of her, two words scrawled in thick capital letters - AUGUST SEVENTH. He taps the scrap of paper with one finger, the motion pushing it right into her grip. It’s the date of the Knights’ first game of the following season. “You have until then to figure it out.” For the first time in her life, she doesn’t chase after him with a question (and she wonders if maybe she’s in the right line of work, if the idea of questions and answers feels so miserable to her), doesn’t wonder _what happens then_? “Leave me alone for the next two months, and I’ll give you one question after the game.”

The stories always warned her about these deals, and how the devil would come dressed in the guise of an angel - she was never warned about the ones in borrowed hoodies. “One question?”

He grins, and she can all but feel the scrape of pen against paper, signing away her soul. “And then I get one.”

She takes it as a warning.

* * *

The press approaches him one final time, but this time he’s alone (he’s just come from a surprise practice with the local college team, and he’s _happy_ ).

“Neil!” The reporter calls; he sounds surprised to see him, like he came to campus for another reason entirely and stumbled across a story. He hates the ones that act like this is normal, this invasive infatuation with someone else’s life - sharks in a small pool he can handle. But these, the soft smiles and the bumbling excitement, these throw him off. “What are you doing here?”

Neil looks down at his practice gear and the stick in his hands.

The reporter blanches. “Right.” He was tired and loose-limbed from practice, from spending an afternoon with bright young faces and bright young futures who love this game as much as he does, but now he just feels… it’s a different kind of tired. A heavier kind. He’s tired of reporters. He’s tired of questions. “What are your plans for the rest of the off-season?”

Neil looks back at the court he’s just leaving, and he chews his bottom lip. “Vacation.” The word is out before he’s realized he’s considering it, a surprise to both of them. Neil saw twenty-three cities in the ten year span before the Foxes, and has see three times as many since - Away games. Spontaneous road trips. Visiting his family, now that they’ve spread across the country the way they have. Moving to the Knights, ten months ago.

The urge to run hasn’t hit him in years; now, it sounds like the best idea he’s had in months.

“Yeah,” he tells the reporter - he doesn’t have a camera on him, but he scribbles furiously with a pen against the back of his hand. By the time he gets back to a computer, gets whatever story he’s planned written, gets it out to the papers or the internet or both, Neil won’t be here to read it. It’s a good feeling. “We’re going on vacation.”

* * *

“We’re going on vacation,” Neil informs him when he arrives home. Their bags are already packed.

Andrew sighs. “Call Magda. She’ll babysit.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Coin Toss Universe by SashaSea [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6366892) by [Rhea314 (Rhea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Rhea314)




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